Multi-generational program gets Eisner Foundation award

The nonprofit Homeless Prenatal Program in San Francisco gets plenty of nice notice in the community for its work helping 3,500 homeless or low-income families a year with delivering and raising healthy babies, job searches and the like, but Monday brought something different.

The former head of the Walt Disney Company showed up to praise them. And deliver a check to a program that has been helping them out.

Michael Eisner has been spending a lot of time since leaving Disney nearly a decade ago helping out with the Eisner Foundation he founded, and that’s what brought him to the prenatal program.

The foundation gives out the $150,000 Eisner Prize for Intergenerational Excellence every year to recognize an individual or non-profit group that helps unite multiple generations to create positive, enduring change in their communities — and it turns out one of the finalists this year is the national Encore Fellowships Network, which has a fellow working at the prenatal outfit.

Jose Alvarado, a former Hewlett Packard networking specialist, is the fellow, and he just started a year-long stint helping organize and improve the prenatal program’s technological systems. His work, and the prenatal program’s mission, caught Eisner’s eye and led to the fellowships network getting picked as a finalist for the prize, a foundation spokeswoman said.

The former Disney chief handed a $10,000 finalist check to network head Marc Freedman, wished him and Alvarado well, and then spent the morning hearing about how to help homeless and poor families. After getting an earful, he now would like to see the program replicated in Los Angeles.

“It is excellent,” Eisner said. “And they are smart enough to fund an Encore Fellow — it’s wise that they knew to bring in that kind of stuff.”

He called the Encore Fellowships Network “impressive” and “unique” for its self-proclaimed practice of placing retired or otherwise “mature” workers with “social purpose organizations in high-impact assignments.”

The winner of the Eisner Prize competition, now in its third year, will be announced in October in Los Angeles.

“It was really nice to have Mr. Eisner here,” said Kristin Hatch, development director at Homeless Prenatal Program. As for Alvarado: “He’s been wonderful to have on board. He’s really helped bring a managerial eye toward the team to see what we do well and what could use improvements.”